Scouting Alabama

[Comebakatz3]

Happy Friday everyone. UK baseball heads to Tuscaloosa this weekend to take on the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Alabama has a major UK connection as they're led by former UK assistant coach, and Assistant Coach of the Year Brad Bohannon. Bohannon has been at Alabama for 6 years now and Alabama has been a bit of a middle of the pack, or lower tier team during his tenure. It seems that Alabama is regularly picked preseason as going to have a breakout year based on the talent they've complied, but they seem to continually fall short of those lofty expectations and it seems as though Bohannon might be a bit on the hot seat. Former UK shortstop Matt Reida is also featured on the Alabama staff as an assistant coach. Reida is in his second season as assistant coach for Alabama. Previously he had a stop as an assistant coach at Indiana.

A year ago Alabama finished with a 31-27 record and a 12-17 record in the conference and like UK just missed the NCAA tournament.

This year, Alabama was once again ranked as a preseason darling, but have slipped out of the D1Baseball top 25. Alabama is currently 17-4, with all 4 of their losses coming in the past two weekends against Florida and Columbia. Their strength of schedule is something that is so bad it shouldn't even be joked about. They have played 14 Q4 games and 2 Q3 games while being 2-4 in the Q1/Q2 games these past two weekends. So, the record and the numbers you'll see in this report look pretty good, but it might not tell the whole story. That being said... I will at least point out that last weekend in Gainesville, Alabama was competitive. They lost 3-0 in game 1 and 7-8 in game two before taking the third game 6-3. So, while they lost the series, they didn't just lay down and get killed by Florida.

Alabama is currently ranked 3rd in the SEC in batting average with an overall team average of .330. One thing this team does is hit the long ball. They had 44 on the year and picked up 4 last weekend against Florida. First baseman Drew Williamson, a grad student, is leading them hitting with a scorching .429 average and 8 home runs and 3 doubles. He also strikes out less than he walks as he has 13Ks to 18 walks. A dangerous bat in the middle of the lineup. Of their regular hitters their leadoff man, and shortstop, is actually their least dangerous in terms of batting average as Jim Jarvis is hitting just a paltry .288 (haha). Jarvis seems to have an excellent approach and is patient as he has 14 walks to just 7 strikeouts. The big bat is Colby Shelton, a freshman playing the hot corner. Shelton is hitting .333 to start the year and already has 11 dingers and 4 doubles. The kid only has 24 hits on the year and 11 of them are home runs. That is mind-blowing... that almost half the time he hits the ball it is leaving the park. That being said, you can tell that Shelton is also taking some freshman lumps as he has struck out 23 times and walked just 9. Would not surprise me to see UK walk this kid a bunch this weekend as they did with the State DH. Alabama just seems to have an 'everybody hits,' approach. You have Williamson and Shelton that stand out with home run numbers, but after that it is really just that everyone is hitting and there are home run threats up and down the lineup. Tommy Seidl is hitting .375 while playing LF, he has a couple of doubles and three homers. Will Hodo is hitting .368 as the DH and has a a double and 4 home runs. Ed Johnson will play second and is hitting .344 with 2 doubles a triple and 3 home runs. Andrew Pinckney is out in right field and hitting .324 with 5 doubles, 2 triples, and 2 home runs. Caden Rose will play centerfield and is hitting .293 with 3 doubles and 3 home runs. He seems to be the only real running threat as he's 7 for 8. Overall, the team doesn't force the issue on the bases a whole lot. Catcher is often split between Mac Guscette and Domic Tamez. Both of these two have played/started about 14/15 games and they have 42 and 48 plate appearances respectively. Guscette is hitting .357 with three doubles and 5 home runs. Tamez is hitting .271 with 3 doubles and 2 home runs. I am not sure either of them is a defensive wizard, but runners do seem more hesitant to run against Tamez as opponents are 5-0 in stolen base attempts against him while they're 19-3 against Guscette.

So, these numbers look outstanding from top to bottom. I mean, worst guy in their top 10 is hitting .271. That is wild. Also every person in the top 10 has at least 2 home runs. They also have 3 guys who have walked more than they've struck out and one other one has just 1 less walk than Ks. Now, that being said... their schedule was trash. So, let's focus in on this past weekend. The sample size is small, so we have to take this with a grain of salt. Over the last weekend Bama hit just .210 as a team and they struck out 35 times while drawing 11 walks and scored 13 runs, or about 4.3 per game. They did hit 4 home runs, so that power is still there and a threat, and all 4 came from different hitters. So, I imagine that their numbers come back down to life a bit as they face better pitching staffs in the SEC, but I think some of those numbers, like the power numbers, are going to remain fairly high. UK pitchers will have to limit mistake pitches this weekend.

 

[Comebakatz3]

On the mound Alabama is ranked 7th in the league with a team ERA of 3.59.

Grayson Hitt will be their go to guy on Friday night. Hitt is a left-handed junior from Germantown, Tennessee that has a 4.37 ERA. He has struck out 32 across 22.2 innings of wor and walked 16. Opponents hitting just .193 against him. Against Hitt, I think things will be interesting this weekend as UK has done a great job of drawing walks and turning those walks into runs. Just looking at his stats, it appears that walks probably account for a good chunk of the damage that has happened against Hitt. He isn't giving up a ton of home runs (2) or extra base hits (2 doubles and a triple) so, it seems like he's likely giving up walks and then untimely hits. For instance, in the Columbia game he gave up a walk, a triple, and a wild pitch to make it 2-0. That right there sounds like a 2023 Kentucky offense type of inning. So, we will see if Hitt can keep his control and keep UK off the bases. Also, to note, Hitt has gone over 5 innings just 1 time this season and that was to 5.2. Twice he's been pulled in the 4th inning. So, I wouldn't expect him to go the distance even if he's controlling the game.

Ben Hess is likely to be the second guy we see on the mound this weekend. Things for the UA pitching staff are a little wonky right now I imagine because they have played 2 weekends in a row with double headers and last weekend their series with Florida started on Thursday. So, last weekend they were done with the entire series by the time UK finished 1 game against Miss State. I bring this up because playing those double headers sometimes messes the pitching rotation up a bit. However, I think it'll be Hess in game 2. Hess, a 6'5 righty sophomore from Illinois, has a 3.46 ERA across 5 starts and 26 innings of work. He's struck out 34 and walked just 5. He does have a big tendency to give up the longball as he's given up 6 this season. Opponents are hitting just .223 against him. Hess looks like he has the ability to be absolutely dominant, or to just be awful. In 3 games he went 16.2 innings giving up just 1 earned run on 7 hits while walking 2 and striking out 21. In the other two games he went 9.1 innings and gave up 12 runs, 9 earned. Oddly, he gave up just 1 walk in those two and struck out 13. So, he wasn't throwing balls as much as he was just apparently throwing meat at the wrong times. Against Florida he went 6.1 innings and gave up 6 earned runs on 8 hits. Looking deeper into that game, in the bottom of the first after Bama got a 3-0 lead in the top, Hess got an out, hit a batter, got an out and then gave up a single and a home run before getting a K to end the inning. He gave up a solo home run in the 5th and another solo home run in the 6th. They stretched him to the 7th with Alabama leading 6-5, but a double a sac and a single tied the game before they lifted him. So, they got good production out of him, but he gave up 3 of his 6 home runs in that game alone. I think that will be the interesting thing to watch with UK this weekend. We are not a power team, just 16 home runs this season, while Florida is a power team and leads the SEC in home runs with 51. So, can we hit the long ball on Hess or will he limit the damage?

The Sunday pitcher, I believe is now essentially up in the air. Jacob McNairy started off in that role, but it appears that he has now slid to the midweek. I believe this has occurred because McNairy was getting hit like crazy. Even in games where the opponent didn't score a ton, he'd still give up a lot of hits. 30 of them total to be exact and opponents are hitting an eye popping .353 against him. It appears that he pitched on Tuesday, so I don't think we see him this weekend. Instead, it seems that Alabama has decided to give Hagan Banks a shot at the weekends. Banks is a sophomore righty from Georgia who got his first start this season on Thursday against Florida and he pitched 3.1 innings of 1 hit baseball. Banks has a 0.00 ERA and opponents are hitting just .143 against him in 9.2 innings of work he's given up 2 unearned runs off of 5 hits while striking out 10 and walking just 1. He has yet to give up an extra bagger of any kind. Now, what you notice most is that he's not going too terribly long in these outings. I don't know if that is because he can't or because they are easing him into longer stuff. I'd expect that when they use him it might be more of an all staff type of approach. It is also conceivable that in a short week, Alabama just turned to Banks in a pinch and that this week they'll give the ball to Luke Holman. Holman, a righty sophomore from Pennsylvania has largely pitched the midweek and has a 1.29 ERA with 4 starts and 5 appearances and 21 innings of work. He's struck out a whopping 30 while opponents hit just .135 against him and have walked just 5 times. He has given up 3 home runs. His last outing he went 7 full, so I'd have to guess that Alabama wants to continue to use him in a starting role, and they might do that this weekend after he got a long rest and hasn't pitched since 3/14.

 

[Comebakatz3]

On Thursday when Bama pitched Hagan Banks they then turned to lefty reliever Hunter Furtado. Furtado carried the torch the rest of the way for Bama going 4.2 innings of 2 hit baseball giving up 3 earned runs while striking out 4 and walking 2. We will see how Bama plays things with their Sunday starter, but if they try the Banks thing again then they may very well pair him with Furtado again. Overall, Furtado has a 3.95 ERA across 13.2 innings of work and he's struck out 14 while walking 6. He has given up 2 home runs and opponents hit .220 against him. After that Bama has a host of arms that have thrown 7-9 innings. Righty freshman Brock Blatter has worked 7.1 and has a 2.45 ERA. Sophomore righty Braylon Myers has worked 9.1 and has a 2.89 ERA. Riley Quick is a freshman righty they use on the weekend a good bit with 9 innings of work and a 4.00 ERA. Kade Woods, a righty redshirt-freshman, seems to be a bit of a stretch closer for them as he often goes about 2 innings near the end of games and has 11 innings total under his belt. He has a 4.09 ERA, but opponents are hitting just .114 against him and he's struck out 22 in those 11 innings. He had a horrible game against Samford that spiked the ERA. In that one with Bama winning 11-0 he came into the game. He hit a batter, gave up a FC, the runner moved to second on a wild pitch, then gave up a single before giving up an HBP and two walks. Furtado then came in and gave up a single and a FC and that left Woods with a line of having given up 5 runs, 4 earned on just 1 hit. So, that ERA might be a bit deceptive on how good the kid can pitch most the time. Jackson Reynolds has a 5.63 ERA as a righty grad student with 8 innings of work. He's been hit a good bit, opponents hitting .333 against him, and I would expect to mostly see him in a game that is already likely out of hand. Alton Davis II has been used a good bit with 9 innings of work, but the lefty freshman has struggled in some games and has a 6.00 ERA. In particular, the horrible game was Columbia on 3.11. He gave up 5 runs, all earned, on 3 hits. Outside of that game he has gone 9 innings (that isn't a typo, he didn't record an out against Columbia) and he's given up just 1 earned run off of 8 hits while striking out 9. Opponents are hitting just .289 against him, but even that number is inflated due to the 3 hits in 3 ABs he gave up in the one game, without that the number drops to .228. I think, despite his one bad outing, he'll find some middle relief work this weekend for at least 1 or 2 innings, but I would expect that it might be a bit later in the weekend given that he threw an inning of work on Tuesday.

One thing to note about this Alabama staff is that they have 7 guys on their roster that are LHPs. Two of them are redshirting because of youth/injury. One is a senior that has only thrown 0.2 innings and has only made the one appearance, not sure why he hasn't had more. Then one of them is a weekend starter (Hitt). So, that means that out of the bullpen, the Crimson Tide will only have 3 lefty options (Davis, Furtado, and Connor Ball). Ball has a 4.76 ERA in 5.2 innings of work. Seems like he's not used a ton, but could be a spot guy given the small number of lefties available for them. As I did with the hitters, we can look at the UF weekend for the Bama pitchers. They had a 4.97 ERA over the weekend, so 1.38 points higher than the overall. They gave up 22 hits in 25.1 innings with all 14 runs given up being earned. They gave up 6 home runs on the weekend, and have given up 13 coming into the weekend. They did pick up 27 strikeouts and walked just 7. One thing that stands out is that they used just 7 pitchers total over the entire weekend. Zane Probst was one they used that I haven't mentioned. He is a righty junior that very much seems to come in to get an out or at most about an inning. He has a 1.59 ERA overall with 5.2 innings of work and 7 appearances. Had gone 5 appearances without giving up a hit prior to the Columbia series where he gave up his first and then he fell apart a bit against UF giving up 3 hits and his first run of the season. If I had to say, this might be the best staff we have seen this season to this point. I don't think they will be the best we see all season, but even their weekend against Florida wasn't all that bad, especially given that Florida might be the most (or two 3) best offensive teams in the entire nation.

Which leads me to the overall... I have to imagine this will be our toughest test to date. While Bama didn't hit all that well against Florida, they put up runs and hit 4 home runs. Florida scored 14 on the weekend and Alabama scored 13. So, the games were extremely close and competitive and Florida basically squeaked out the ones they needed to in order to win the series. UK pitching staff is much better than Florida, so we will see how the effects Alabama, but they will also be in their own ballpark instead of on the road and if I had to imagine, they wonky weekend series might have also had something to do with the numbers from last weekend. On the mound, Bama was still pretty solid against an outstanding Florida offense. Gave up too many home runs, but that shouldn't be as big of an issue with UK given that we have about 30 fewer home runs this season than Florida does as a team. Just think of this as well, before this weekend Alabama had given up just 13 home runs on the season (UK has given up just 15), so Florida hit almost half as many as they'd given up against all their other opponents combined. So, I kind of doubt that they give up a big crooked number of HRs like that against UK. That being said, UK seems to hit and walk and find those way to score and to maximize damage. Bama does a pretty solid job getting strikeouts and limiting walks, to compare to UK Bama has 221 strikeouts and has given up 75 walks while UK pitchers have thrown 203 strikeouts and walked just 68. So, pretty similar numbers there with Bama being a bit higher in both. HBP numbers are also similar with Bama having 2 more than UK. So, overall I think Bama pitchers aren't going to give up a ton of free passes, but it certainly happens.

 

[Big_Blue_1018]

Perfect write up! Alabama has switched up their rotation for the weekend though.

~ Ben Hess will go Friday night

~Luke Holman will start Saturday

~Grayson Hitt will pitch Sunday.

 

[briarcreek]

Looks like Logan Martin is back and will get the start tonight for UK.

 

[SeanCain]

Comebak that’s one hell of an impressive scouting report. Very nice work.

 

[Comebakatz3]

Perfect write up! Alabama has switched up their rotation for the weekend though.

~ Ben Hess will go Friday night

~Luke Holman will start Saturday

~Grayson Hitt will pitch Sunday.

Thanks. I knew things were getting a little weird with their staff, but wasn't sure if it was just because of the weather moving the games around last week or what.

 

[SeanCain]

I have to admit Alabama has me a little nervous. They have some talented kids. It’s hard to win a series at Florida. Ole “Sully” is a helluva coach but comes across to me as a grade A douchebag. Hopefully we can continue to get timely hitting and pitching comes through. The SEC is no joke in baseball. Probably the toughest conference in the country. Every weekend is a battle. Go Cats.

 

[Crazycat68]

Appreciate ya Comebak you the man.